Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Nuremberg, Germany - A Saturday night out

Saturday night was my last night in Nuremberg, and with a 7.5 hour flight home awaiting me the next day, I wanted to make it count and worry about sleep later. I always head first for a cocktail to Backerhof around the corner from my hotel. The building from the outside is so unassuming, but ascend to the second floor and you feel as though you have just walked into your grandmother's living room, that is, if your grandmother is a countess from many generations of old german aristocracy and her 'living room' is more like a ballroom where she holds court on a leather chaise underneath a massive crystal chandelier, flickering candelabras, velvet curtains, over 20 ft ceilings and rows of bookshelves. But your grandmother is hip: she turns the music up loud, the lights down low, and serves a mean martini.

Surprisingly, on the other side of the bookshelves is a Thai restaurant where I have eaten on many occasions. Nosh on vegetable spring rolls, chicken satay with peanut dipping sauce and the classic pad thai noodle dish, among other fairly authentic Thai offerings. When you're finished dining, head back to the lounge bar for a digestif and let your grandmother school you on how cool zee germans are ....

Dinner this evening took me to a small little Italian hole-in-the-wall just outside the city walls called La Locanda. The owner knows how to have a good time and, as the night wears on, notice the music gets louder and he might even be dancing on the table next to you. There are no menus here, each day there is a new list of dishes written on a chalk board that is brought to you table-side:

As we were a big group, we started with a massive antipasto plate with all sorts of grilled vegetables, various salumi, vitello tonnato (typical northern italian dish consisting of thin slices of veal with a tuna sauce on top) green beans, mushrooms, caramelized onions and the like.

We moved on to pasta dishes that included gnocchi alla sorrentina (not exactly authentic as the mozzarella cheese is supposed to be melted and stringy within the sauce, but the gnocchi themselves were plump and delicious), large ravioli in a truffle sauce, spaghetti in a red sauce of mussels, and strozzapretti (literally 'priest choker', a form of pasta that looks like elongated cavatelli) alla N'duja (a SPICY spreadable sausage made with pork from Calabria, Italy).

Main dishes were the argentinian steak filet with truffle sauce and veal scaloppina cooked in marsala wine.

Antipasto for the table

Strozzapretti alla N'duja

Spaghetti alle cozze

Ravioli tartufati

Gnocchi alla sorrentina

Scaloppina al marsala

Desserts were panna cotta, tiramisu and profiteroles:

After such a large meal, you need to burn some calories, so I headed to the train station. The train station?? Yes! One of the hottest dance clubs right now in Nuremberg is inside the main train station and is called Indabahn (literally translates to 'in the station'). Click on the red arrows at the top of the 360 camera screen to choose a section of the club and see how cool the space is here: Indabahn 360 camera.

The music changes depending on the night and you can sit in the lounge or around the oval shaped bar and have a cocktail, or head to the lower level to the dance floor and show the glamorous crowd your moves into the wee hours of the morning; you'll probably be about ready for another round of pasta by then.